Sunday, April 14, 2013

Bread, Fish, and Mission

Modern pilgrims in Israel can quickly sense the
contrast between the dry, dusty desert of Judea (where Jerusalem is) and the
relatively lush, green of Galilee (where today’s Gospel story [John 21:1-19] is set). Renewed annually by winter’s life-giving
rains, the land around the large lake the Gospel calls the Sea of Tiberias
(more commonly called the Sea of Galilee) is at its lushest and greenest in
spring. And so, it was to that place at this season of the year, that
Peter and six other disciples returned. It had been from those familiar shores
that Jesus had originally called them to follow him. Now they’d come home –
back to what they knew best. They went fishing.

But this
was to be no normal fishing expedition!

There’s a lovely little church on the shore that
marks the supposed site of this event. In front of the altar is a rock,
traditionally venerated as the stone on which the risen Lord served his
disciples a breakfast of bread and fish. Staples of the Galilean diet, bread
and fish seem to be staples of the Gospel story itself! Just a short walk away
is another church, marking the site where Jesus had (not so long before) fed
5000+ people with five loaves and a few fish. Presumably, the disciples would
have well remembered that earlier meal. And surely we should as well, as we
also assemble here at the table lovingly set for us by the risen Lord
himself. Here, in this church on this hilltop, as surely as on
that distant lakeshore, he feeds us with food we would never have gotten
on our own. Here too he challenges us, as he challenged Peter, with the
question: do you love me?

Peter was asked this critical question three times –
obviously corresponding to the three times Peter had earlier denied Jesus. It’s
as if – as one of our local Protestant pastors put it recently – as if Jesus
were giving Peter an alternative set of memories, his triple profession of love
replacing his triple denial.

Later in the story, we learn that another disciple
was following Jesus and Peter as they walked along the shore. This conversation
initially concerned primarily just Jesus and Peter; but, listening in with that
other disciple, we learn that what started out as a fishing story has
now turned into a shepherding story.

In relation to the world, Peter (and his fellow
disciples) have been commissioned by Jesus to keep casting their nets, drawing
people in – into the Church, which will continue the mission of the risen Lord
in the world. But once inside, within the Church the dominant image is that of
Jesus the Good Shepherd, who here shares that shepherding role in a special way
with Peter. Others will share in shepherding the flock, of course, but Peter is
particularly and specially called to follow Jesus in the role of the Church’s shepherd. Hence, that
lovely little church on the shore that marks the supposed site of this story is
called “The Church of the Primacy of Peter.”

Proclaiming the primacy of Peter and his successors,
the Second Vatican Council declared that Christ willed that the bishops, as
successors of the apostles, “should be shepherds in his Church until the end of
the world. In order that the episcopate itself, however, might be one and
undivided,” the Council continued, Christ “put Peter at the head of the other
apostles, and in him he set up a lasting and visible source and foundation of
the unity both of faith and of communion.”

This mission of Peter and of his successor, the
Pope, has been very much in the news these past two months, beginning with the
resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and continuing with the election of Pope
Francis, who just last Sunday formally took possession of the Lateran Basilica,
the cathedral church of Rome, ceremonially signifying his office as Chief
Shepherd of the Church, commissioned to tend Christ’s flock in the world.

Typically, in these gospel stories of the risen
Lord’s appearances to his disciples, there is the sense that, while this is
certainly the same Jesus the disciples had followed in life and who had died on
the Cross, something about him is now different. Hence, the dramatic moment
when Jesus is recognized, as when thedisciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter,“It is the Lord!” But recognizing the
risen Christ is not the end of the story. It is but the beginning
of a life lived in love, in a community of love. We learn that
love by following the risen Lord. So, even before being formally
entrusted with his special mission, Peter leads the way, dressing up for
the occasion, jumping into the sea and swimming to Jesus ahead of the others.

As his role requires, Peter here is already leading
his flock, leading here by example. His example illustrates for the rest
of us what it means, first, to recognize the risen Lord and, then, actually to
follow him.

Learning love is a lifelong process. So it was for
Peter, as Jesus’ concluding words to him made clear – just as his words also
make clear for us that we learn by doing, by following.
If we keep Christ in the closet, confining him to at most only a corner of our
lives, if we do nothing to bring his risen life anywhere to anyone
else right here and now in the basic bread and fish of ordinary life, then well
may Jesus have to ask each of us over and over again, do you love me?

And so, after everything else has been said, Jesus
says to us, to each of us in his or her own way of life, in his
or her particular role and vocation in the Church, just what he said to Peter: Follow me!

About Me

Rev. Ronald Franco, CSP, is a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle (The Paulist Fathers) and Vice-Postulator for the Canonization Cause of Paulist Founder, Isaac Hecker. He is Pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish, Knoxville, TN,